I think the population will naturally level out. There's only so many people who can handle and afford a week-long trip in the middle of nowhere, in such a harsh environment with radical self-reliance and no guarenteed entertainment. I realize the population growth trend graph is a good argument against my assumptions, but I really do feel it will approach a limit of approximately 50 - 60,000 on its own, with no need for caps. I really doubt all the tickets that have been purchased are going to be used by the original purchasers, even if there are no scalpers there will be plenty of people who aren't committed but bought a ticket "just in case" but when the reality of providing their own shelter and food and travel and time off work sinks in they'll be offloading tickets in a hurry.

"It's impossible." said pride.
"It's risky." said experience.
"It's pointless." said reason.
"Give it a try." whispered the heart.

IMHO, this graph is useless because the max population is capped by permit/ticket availability. In my world of back of the napkin math and no population cap, I see an accelerated curve to be (1.2 * this year) = next years population. This would put us at something like:

With 500 placed theme camps, 300 art projects, some labor intensive, 1000 mutant vehicle applications, infrastructure volunteers, some where experience is required - rangers, health, DPW, gate, greeters, info, Artery, Earth Guardians,...., 10000 tickets doesn't go far, even with 30% of 40,000 which may be in the hands of camps and volunteers. How large is the Temple construction crew? MV's overlap with theme camps and maybe some art projects too, reducing demand.

So I would guess the org is polling every department to canvas past year volunteers on ticket status and figuring out how many experienced and new volunteers they need.

And presumably they would be graphing the data from registered theme camps to understand where theme camp participant numbers are headed.

From that it should be possible to make a model of infrastructure participants needed and theme camp/art/MV nice to have ratios against the future BLM caps.

(It's clear from the number of RV's that there are Burners who can afford the scalper prices. RV growth can be estimated by running image recognition on the satellite photos. It's also clear that the business is sitting on more than $14M in cash, the largest and earliest cash capture in event history.)

I still think that one way to raise the population cap and lessen exodus traffic is to allow ( require ? ) the majority of theme camps to leave after Monday. We get early entry, maybe we could get late exit passes. It just extends your vacation a couple of days - what the hell. I'd gladly stay until Wed morning and moop ................

Handjam, you should forward that idea onto BMHQ. There is a good argument it would lessen the impact on the roads, be better for local businesses and therefore shouldn't be included in the BLM person-day fee.

I think you can't mandate that they stay past Monday. You can bet that some members of big camps have to be off-playa because (if nothing else) they stacked their vacation days to do prep on playa.On Monday night everyone who's left in the village have a dinner together...

The Lady with a Lamprey

"The powerful are exploiting people, art and ideas, and this leads to us plebes debating how to best ration ice.Man, no wonder they always win....." Lonesomebri

I think you can't mandate that they stay past Monday. You can bet that some members of big camps have to be off-playa because (if nothing else) they stacked their vacation days to do prep on playa.On Monday night everyone who's left in the village have a dinner together...

No, but certain theme camp members could volunteer to stay later. My wife leaves Sat. night right after the Man burns, but several of us could certify that we would stay past Monday. No different than asking to come early to set up - nobody mandates that either. 2 of us are retired - no big deal staying and helping moop.

In fact, I'm staying until Tuesday this year since last year I left at 5 pm Monday and didn't get home ( to the Sacramento area ) until 6:30 am Tuesday anyway - WTF !?!!!